Beauty, Mercy, Justice

Citizens or Subjects?

I think this little anecdote from a comment Daniel makes on the "Commandos" post below deserves some emphasis: "I was talking about this incident at work and one guy said ‘Well, you were driving on a state road; therefore it is their road and they should be able to stop you if they want.’"

Their road?!?! This is worse than the politicians who call a tax cut an expenditure, and as bad as the educators who think they have a greater right to your children’s minds than you do. If this sentiment is very widespread, then my gloomy sense that most people are really not cut out to be citizens, but would rather be subjects, is all too accurate.

Noted gloomster John Derbyshire of National Review has repeatedly challenged the conservative (or, probably more accurately, neo-conservative) assertion that everybody wants the kind of freedom offered by modern democracies–I mean, even aside from the obvious current problems of sleazy entertainment and general decadence, he thinks the Western concept of political liberty is just not a factor in the way most human beings look at the world.

My own (as I said, gloomy) suspicion is that this may be the most fundamental problem, truly transcending views on specific issues, for today’s democracies.

—Maclin Horton

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19 Responses

You know the distinction between freedom defined as ‘freedom for’ and freedom defined as ‘freedom from’. The latter is said to come from the Enlightenment, and specifically from Kant. Freedom means then, autonomy. One might want to say then, that, without the former, the latter cannot stand. I wouldn’t leap here, however, even one is certainly somewhat prompted to do so by more than one of Leo XIII’s encyclicals.

In theological circles, especially amongst contemporary Protestants for some reason, the Enlightenment definition of freedom is these days designated as a v. Bad Thing. I’ve always had a sneaking sympathy for it, nonetheless – how Bad is the last line of Johnny Tremain? (not very, in my opinion). The ‘that a man can stand up’ had at least in its origins a certain religious resonance, a respect for human dignity. Kant did at least seem to think his definition of freedom as autonomy applied to Humanity.

It’s only when it’s left to degenerate into ‘leaving me alone to enjoy myself’ that freedom ceases to be valued as such at all. For then, I don’t care if it’s my road or their road, my school or their school, so long as they leave me alone to enjoy myself.

But one has to give some basis for a “freedom from,” unless one holds to an Enlightenment state of nature paradigm in which autonomy is simply the given and obedience to an external order an exception. Such a view assumes that man as man is an unrelated individual and that definitive relations with others only arise with the social compact.

If one assumes, however, that political relations are natural to man, then autonomy is not a given, except in certain well-defined spheres. If I claim a sphere of autonomy or sovereignty as an individual or as the father of a family, that autonomy or sovereignty must have a rational basis in my nature as a human being or in my duties of station as a father. For instance, Pope Leo XIII in Rerum Novarum argues against state intervention in the household based on the fact that the family preexists the state and thus a father’s authority is not derived from state authority. However, in other spheres I never have autonomy because, simply by being human, I am made to live within a political order.

The Enlightenment project is different. Under the social compact theory, a person enters into human society with absolute freedom, absolute automony. Through the social compact, he gives up certain rights to autonomy. The basis is absolute natural automomy rather than natural relatedness.

There is dignity in a man being able to stand up when he refuses to submit what is his own by nature to another. A father should do all he can to defend the sovereignty of his family. An individual should fight any intrusions into those things which are inviolable. But to “stand up” in other areas might violate human dignity; for in some things touching the common good one is subject to an external ordering principle and should acquiesce to it. Where it is owed, there is great dignity in obedience.

I am not sure what to think about the road block scenario. The government has the right to regulate public interaction between citizens, where that interaction touches on the common good. So, as Mr. Forrest pointed out elsewhere, the government has the right to inspect public kitchens. It would also have the right, I would think, to inspect the safety of automobiles or assure that individuals have the ability to operate a car or to take proper measures to keep real drunks off the road. I can’t see that stopping cars on a road, if there is just cause based on the common good, would violate any rights. It would, rather, assure rights, such as the right one has to travel on a road in safety to one’s life. I would draw the line, though, at mandatory, random breathalizer tests, since this would invade the sphere of privacy that belongs to a person — a sphere that should not never be intruded upon without demonstrable cause. This sphere of privacy, is, I think, analogous to the privacy of the home, which lies within the sovereignty of the family — which is not subject to, because it preexists, the state.

Just to be clear, I don’t think the traffic stops violate some fundamental right. It’s just a question of whether they’re reasonable and appropriate, and also their significance at the present time in relation to a growing intrusiveness and militarization of police power. That’s been a concern of many on both right and left for some time now. A lot of it is of course due to the “War on Drugs” which is arguably doing more harm than good.

All those World War II movies have left many Americans with what I think is a healthy resentment of the right of the police to stop people at any time and demand to see credentials. “Papers, please” comes in a German accent. (Not that there’s anything wrong with speaking–or being–German!).

In reply to Francesca’s comment: there was a wonderful observation on the prevalent concept of freedom in a piece by Theodore Dalrymple in some fairly recent National Review: discussing a young man having fits about the fact that his numerous and creepy facial piercings were objected to by his employer, Dalrymple says something like “his concept of freedom means that he is only free if he can do anything he likes without suffering any unwanted consequences.” Dalrymple’s an agnostic but that’s a nice instance of the Catholic concept of a disordered concept of freedom.

Mr Zehner, I’m sure that ‘freedom to’ is a better and deeper understanding of freedom than ‘freedom from.’ I’m just not sure that the very second you take the step from the first to the second you have taken the step to defining freedom as
being ‘free to do anything one likes without suffering any unwanted consequences’ or toward not caring if its their road or our road, so like as I can do what I like with my (ever-shrinking) privacy. The men of Johnny Tremain’s generation would not have stood down for random breathalyser tests – but the men of our generation are doing so. I’d agree that ‘freedom from’ needs a religious backing in ‘freedom to’ in order to be anything more than private autonomy, but, at least historically, it was a long road from the original conception of freedom from to today.

I think there is a little tendency to treat the state as an abstraction. As you move into libertarian circles, the state becomes a four letter word. Whatever road blocks are, they are not an issue of freedom. We have roads, laws, and officers to ensure the common good; they are not impositions from above, but made from within.

If one is going to argue against road blocks, one should argue that they do not serve the common good. This means saying that the ability to arrest a drunk driver and impeding the congress of a 1,000 people do not serve the public good. In our modern world where a person’s greatest fear is death, this is often a very difficult argument to make. The gobble-de-goop of “if-it-saves-one-life” is so pervasive that most anything will be justified.

It’s perhaps worth pointing out, too, that as both technology and economic activity became more complex, the legitimate need to protect citizens gave both a pretext – and in some cases a legitimate reason – for the public authorities to intervene more than they previously had. I don’t know if riding a horse or driving a wagon drunkenly can be a safety hazard to anyone except the drunken driver, but it surely isn’t as much of a hazard as driving 60+ mph in a car.

Similarly in the economic sphere, the modern corporation is a far cry from a general store, and arguably requires supervision at a higher level. Hence big government often grew in response to big business.

There is a good case to be made that it doesn’t serve the common good. Mr Nichols already alluded to it. Police officers would much rather be out there manning road-blocks against drunk drivers or drivers against seat belts than dealing with dangerous criminals. Twelve years ago, my neighborhood had practically given up dealing with a semi-violent family who terrorised all and sundry to their hearts content. I decided to leave, and got a job 300 miles away. My head of department was an hour late for the leaving party because he was stopped on the motorway for not wearing a seat-belt. If those policemen had been on the beat, and in town, one family could never have terrorized an entire neighbourhood; but they’d much rather deal with nice middle class car drivers than hooligans on the streets. This is against the common good – although as you say, visualizing ‘just one death’ from a driving incident gives this avoidance of duty the look of upholding the common good.

Mr. Horton, I doubt if one could read Johnny Tremain over the age of 13 with much enjoyment, unless perhaps reading it to one’s children, and yours are too old for that! It’s a very well imagined tale of the American Revolution. At the end, the narrator’s friend Rab has died, and he says, ‘Rab has died, and many others have died, that a man can stand up.’ I re-read the book at an American friend’s house this summer, and it is beautifully imagined. I’m surprised that so many American theologians who grew up reading that could collaborate in the *thorough-going* condemnation of the Enlightenment project now common in Protestant circles.

‘Rab has died, and many others have died, that a man can stand up.’ I re-read the book at an American friend’s house this summer, and it is beautifully imagined. I’m surprised that so many American theologians who grew up reading that could collaborate in the *thorough-going* condemnation of the Enlightenment project now common in Protestant circles.

How do you figure that the sentiment expressed by the fictionalized James Otis is a function of the “Enlightenment Project”?

Not sure what you mean, Mr. Deco, but the narrator seems to be talking about ‘freedom from’ – British government, taxation without representation, etc – not freedom to. The ‘religion’ of the book seems to be human rights per se – and, as I said, I’ve no objection. It is not absolutizing human rights *against God*. It’s that God doesn’t come into this idea of freedom.

If I recall correctly the monologue put into the mouth of James Otis by the author, he was referring to the indignities and cruelties that were inflicted on those of servile status.
Your implicit assertion is that the activities of the philosophes et al were a necessary component of the abolition of cruel features encoded into hereditary subjection. Why?

I was surprised to see so much about the French Revolution in Johnny Tremain. It certainly has 100% good to say of the French Revolutionaries, and thus of the philosophes, and says nothing to deprecate the project. The book is not about ‘freedom for’ God but about ‘freedom from’ other human beings, and their hereditary codes. It presents the man who fights for ‘freedom from’ as the role model – this is the man who can stand up.

I was surprised to see so much about the French Revolution in Johnny Tremain.

The setting of Johnny Tremain is Boston in the years running from 1772 to 1775. The French revolution was about fifteen years into the future at that point and does not figure in the plot.

There is a populist aspect to Johnny Tremain. In the presentation of the antagonists to the title character (the Lyte family) and in his explicit words is a notion that the American Revolution amounted to an upending of the colonial social order, not merely the political aspect thereof. I have tended to think that Esther Forbes take said more about her social sympathies than about the history of that period, but perhaps my understanding of late colonial and early federal society and political struggles is deficient.

“I’d agree that ‘freedom from’ needs a religious backing in ‘freedom to’ in order to be anything more than private autonomy…”

I did not mean to insert religion as the basis for “freedom to”; rather, I see what I wrote as based, perhaps inadequately, in natural philosphy.

Apropos of what Mr. Deco wrote, the initial complaints against British taxation of the colonies after the French and Indian War were based on the traditional rights that the colonists claimed both as colonists and as Englishmen. British rule was seen as violating the customary government of the colonies where internal taxation was a function of the colonial legislatures, not Parliament. Enlightenment ideas of liberty to justify the rebellion and the subsequent revolution were a different strand that some revolutionaries inserted into the quarrel. And, admittedly, they became the predominant strain; but they weren’t the basis for the original claims to immunity.

Indeed, traditional European notions of local immunity from central govenment inroads into local governing rights, based on custom and traditions of rule, seem an adequate basis for the Tremain “stand up” line. Enlightenment ideas have tended to make the state, as representing the popular will, supreme over the rights and immunities of subsidiary bodies, like the family.

Mr Deco, No apologies for your long awaiting – I live in a different time zone from your good self. Why is Johnny in a fix? First, he burns his hand and apparently destroys his capacity to continue as an apprentice silver smith by working on a Sunday – his excessively pious master has made it impossible for the household to finish an important order by deciding, from a study of the Christian Scriptures, that Sunday begins on Saturday night (this is called the Vigil on the Feast in Catholic tradition, and a perfectly good reading of the tradition). So Johnny works secretly on the Sunday, and maims himself. The novel makes the causes of this event a conjunction of false religious excess (the master) rebounding on Johnny’s pride. The novel is not *only* saying the fault is the master’s, but nor is it aiming to show that the fault is purely Johnny’s arrogance. Excessive religiosity combined with youthful rebellion against said authority is thus the basic plot device of the novel.

We then learn that Johnny really belongs to an aristocratic family. His mother is or was a Tremain, but was cast out of the family upon marrying a French doctor. She died in France. We hear all about the conditions under which she died in France, and about the French doctor’s morals vs. the morality of the merchant British family. The inspiration for Johnny’s revolt is France. This is backed up within the novel by his conversations with Paul Revere, who is said to have French ancestery. The hope is repeatedly expressed within the novel that what has been done in America will inspire the same to be done in France; and vice versa, the inspiration for what is done in America is said to be the French experience.

Incidentally, the novel can hardly be said to be about ‘encoded hereditary subordination’ given that the Tremains are not in fact aristocrats but traders.

My question was why you thought the sentiment expressed by the fictionalized James Otis was a function of “the Enlightenment Project”. I am still perplexed on this point.

We then learn that Johnny really belongs to an aristocratic family. His mother is or was a Tremain, but was cast out of the family upon marrying a French doctor. She died in France. We hear all about the conditions under which she died in France, and about the French doctor’s morals vs. the morality of the merchant British family. The inspiration for Johnny’s revolt is France. This is backed up within the novel by his conversations with Paul Revere, who is said to have French ancestery. The hope is repeatedly expressed within the novel that what has been done in America will inspire the same to be done in France; and vice versa, the inspiration for what is done in America is said to be the French experience.

Johnny Tremain is in the novel the unacknowledged nephew of a local grandee named Lyte, and first cousin to the man’s repellant daughter. The Lyte’s were not of the Peerage. Whether they were of the gentry or wealthy burgesses is left unspecified in the novel, though given their primary residence was in town, the latter fits better.

His mother’s maiden name was Lyte and his father’s Tremain. His father, we learn, was a physician who made use of the alias “Charles Latour”. That is who the Lyte’s understood whom their estranged sister had married and that is why Johnny went unrecognized by the Lytes until nearly the end of the novel. Johnny Tremain’s mother died not in France but in Boston shortly after she had arranged for an apprenticeship for her son. The Lytes mistakenly thought she had died in France when she was in fact living as a widow in Townsend, Maine.

I do not think there was much about the late doctor’s morals, nor any references to any title of nobility he might have held, but it has been 30 years since I read the book.

As far as I can recall, Johnny’s revolt was largely a consequence of his conflict with the Lytes and also of a change of scene, from a position as apprentice to a largely apolitical silversmith unsympathetic to Sam Adams, et al. to a position as an employee of a local printer very committed to the cause.

Incidentally, the novel can hardly be said to be about ‘encoded hereditary subordination’ given that the Tremains are not in fact aristocrats but traders.

I forgot the family name was Lyte, not Tremain, and that the mother died in Boston. I don’t think I forgot much else. I agree the fact that she went back to the US is important – that’s how she got Johnny apprenticed to the silversmith in Boston. The important things are that the mother and her husband go to France, which stands in the novel for birthplace of its key ideas of liberty, that his father is a doctor, that is, an iconic representative of the role model human being which the Enlightenment substituted for that of the priest – ie, a strictly humanitarian role model, as opposed to a theocentric one -, that his mother’s marriage to this father is what causes her to be cast out of the family, who for all their snobbery are merely tradespeople, that the French and American ideas of liberty are upheld as a single ideal, and that this ideal is ‘freedom from’ other people’s efforts to impose their laws on us, not freedom for God. That a man can worship God in truth is Leo XIII’s idea of freedom; that a man can stand up against what he regards as illegitimate authority is the Enlightenment idea.

Your reasoning about the symbolism of the father’s profession and nationality is quite a daisy chain and I simply cannot credit it much.

Please note that the information on the identity of his father is delivered quite late in the novel. All of the influences on the protagonist are local. Please note also the description of the father delivered by Johnny’s cousin – a prisoner of war on parole who was able through personal charm to make himself a temporary fixture of the Boston society so rudely portrayed at points in the book – paints him as more anticipatory (if you insist on that) of the July Monarchy than of the First Republic (and rather unlike his son).

Now that I think about it, I believe quite early in the novel he describes his mother’s family thus, “she came from gentlefolk”, so perhaps his uncle was the odd colonial who belonged to the English gentry.

Also, and on the subject of morals, there is a scene in the book where the protagonist berates members of the Lyte entourage for their decadence, invoking the memory of the Calvinist grandfather of one of their number (the master craftsman to which Johnny was once apprenticed).

Conceptions of mutual rights and obligations which might be infringed were incorporated into the discourse of feudal and manorial society and rather pre-date M. Voltaire’s public career.